


to perish twice

by simplycarryon



Category: Uncommon Time (Video Game)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 13:31:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5207657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplycarryon/pseuds/simplycarryon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teagan, and the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to perish twice

**Author's Note:**

> _Some say the world will end in fire,  
>  Some say in ice.  
> From what I’ve tasted of desire  
> I hold with those who favor fire.  
> But if it had to perish twice,  
> I think I know enough of hate  
> To say that for destruction ice  
> Is also great  
> And would suffice.  
> \- Robert Frost_

The air around you is stale and thick, like dust that clings to the back of your throat, and even as you roll out of bed and rub the sleep from your eyes, you know something's wrong. You can feel it, just there, just out of your reach, teasing pinpricks of frustration.

You think maybe it's the lack of conversation, the stillness that pervades a space that should have Meirin and Saki's quiet morning tones filling it. You've gotten used to them, too, adjusted to the way they take up space in your life. It's not something you always like, but there is a residual fondness in you for them, and you've learned to compensate for that the same way that you compensate for an injury or a handicap.

So maybe it's that. You expect Meirin, at least, to be awake, but after yesterday you can't really blame her for sleeping in. You can feel the weight of Alto's decisions settling back on your shoulders, but you don't let them stay there, you can't, you won't. There is a part of you that still wants to make that choice for her—and you think there always will be, no matter how hard you try to fight it—but ultimately, Alto has made her choices, however fucking shitty you may think they are.

Maybe if you'd been a better friend to her before all of this, you...

No.

No sense wasting time dreaming about might-haves, you decide, and you pull on your boots with a sense of finality. You could have been better. You should have. But you weren't, and you didn't, and now, here you are.

At the end of the world, with nothing but two once-friends and your own bad decisions.

You're not sure what comes next. If Alto's ushering in the new ice age—and you know better than to think that she's exaggerating, because Alto doesn't exaggerate—then there isn't a lot that _can_ come next. You can't stop her. You've considered trying, but you've considered a lot of things in the last twelve hours. And you think, maybe, that you owe it to Alto to not even try to fuck this up for her. And even if you didn't, in some strange, cynical way, you agree with her, with the idea that the world isn't worth saving. A world that could take a kid and systematically break her for any reason, let alone in the name of saving the hateful garbage that calls itself humanity...

You know the truth, now. However hard and cold and brittle a truth it is, you know it.

Too little too late.

You ball one hand into a fist and strike your opposite forearm, flexing your fingers against the spike of pain. Pain is—good, in a weird way. It takes your mind off things, helps you focus your thoughts. You used to hit things until your knuckles bled, dig your fingers into your flesh until bruises flowered purple under the pressure, but you've had to adjust for that too. People look askance at that.

But punching yourself in the forearm helps. The hurt is still sharp enough to ground you.

Meirin and Saki still aren't up, and you're not well-rested enough for this bullshit. You don't know if you're going to take the end of the world lying down, because part of you wants to give up and part of you wants to fight it with everything you have, because even if it's not enough (and it won't be enough, how could it be), at least you could say that you tried. But putting all that aside, and looking at the decisions in front of you, you're going to need both of them awake.

The air is stagnant and dull.

They're laid out on the other bed, side by side and hand in hand, and—you know. You think part of you knew from the moment your ensemble splintered that their intertwined threads would end here, but it doesn't come any easier after the fact. The breath leaves your lungs all at once, like you've been struck, and you have to fight for it even as your chest heaves and your throat tightens like a vise around the sound that tries to force itself free.

They left you letters, you realize numbly. 

How fucking kind of them.

 

 

You bury them next to each other, and you do it with your own hands, in plots you buy with the money Saki left behind. There’s flowers, here, and a view, and maybe they would have liked that, but anything you could possibly do for them now is too little and too late and too hollow.

They weren’t great company, really. Nobody in your group really was, or maybe you were the one who was never great company, but it’s too late for that now and you feel the space they’ve left behind like it’s a part of you that’s gone missing. There's a hole in you, a vanished vitality you didn't know you had been relying on.

Alto and Aubrey. Meirin and Saki.

And now, just you.

 

 

You can feel winter settling into the air, digging itself slowly into the spine of the earth. Even here, at the edge of the continent, with the sea stretching vast across the horizon in front of you, you can feel the chill of the end of the world at your back.

You wonder if you could have stopped this. If you’d been strong enough, back then, maybe—

You think about your fingers at her pale throat, her blood in rusty ribbons on your hands. You think about how easy it would have been to break her neck and the Cantabile line and free her from every insane duty she’d ever been forced into. You think about killing your best friend because you want what’s best for her and you know, deep down, that that’s a really shitty thing to think about.

It’s the least you could do, and the most you could do, and it wouldn’t have fixed anything anyway.

This whole story was broken long before you stepped into it, and you broke it even further instead of even trying to fix it, and you wish you’d been strong enough to be the person Alto needed all those times you never were and now this is it. This is the way the world ends. Empty and cold and hopeless.

Lonely, too. But you earned that part, you think, looking up at the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> is any of this true to character?? who knows. Teagan is in the lonely shame corner forever.


End file.
